The Knife of Never Letting Go

The story, narrated sparkily and saltily by its hero Todd, unpeels Prentisstown's dark secrets like the layers of a very rotten onion. Ness, an acclaimed author of adult fiction as well, moves things along at a breakneck pace, and Todd's world is filled with memorable characters, foul villains. * Financial Times *
An impossibly good novel. It is at once endearing yet unsentimental; compassionate yet damning; exhaustingly exhilarating and yet tempered by a staid and considered emotivity. Written in the first-person present tense in an unapologetically impudent manner, this novel captures exceptionally the brash bravado and the underlying insecurities that actively teem inside the minds and explode in the actions of boys on their path to manhood. * www.inthenews.co.uk *
THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL excellent debuts in recent months and perhaps the most impressive is Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go. It's the story of Todd, the last boy in a community of men. In Prentisstown, the Noise virus has left men with the ability to hear each other's thoughts, those of animals too. The idea may send shivers up the spine, but how different is it to the constant intrusion of e-mails, texts, advertisements and CCTV we already suffer? When Todd finds a lone girl in the marshes he realises they have to escape, which isn't easy when your hunters can hear your every thought. Written in Todd's characteristic vernacular and brimming over with ideas about adolescence, faith and free will, this is intelligent, immersive storytelling. -- Keith Gray * The Scotsman *
A book like no other. It's one of the most gripping, fantastical reads around. -- Camilla de la Bedoyere * Sunday Express *
Darkly imagined and brilliantly created, the painful dystopian setting of a world full of noise in which all thoughts can be heard as if spoken is the background to this tense coming of age story. * The Guardian *